Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,35

that were almost certainly loaded up with fléchettes: paper packets of razor blades that would turn into a lethal cloud when fired.

She sighed in relief.

said Clef.

She moved forward to delicately step over the first trip wire…

Then she stopped.

She thought for a moment, and peered throughout the darkness of the room. She thought she could spy the trip wires in the dim light—tiny, dark filaments stretching across the shadows.

One, she counted. Two. Three…

She frowned. Then she knelt to touch the floor and wall again with her bare hands.

asked Clef.

said Sancia. She waited until her talents confirmed it once more.

She didn’t answer. She looked around the first floor again. It was dark, but she couldn’t see anything unusual.

She looked out the windows at the building fronts beyond. No movement, nothing strange.

She cocked her head and listened. She could hear the lapping of waves, the sigh of the wind, the creaking and crackling as the building flexed in the breeze—but nothing else.

Perhaps he’s forgotten it, she thought. Perhaps he overlooked it, just this one time.

But that was not like Sark. After his torture at the hands of the Morsinis, he’d become wildly paranoid and cautious. It was not in his nature to forget a safeguard.

She looked around again, just to be sure…

Then she spied something.

Was that a glint of metal, there in the wooden beam across the room? She narrowed her eyes, and thought it was.

A fléchette? Buried there in the wood?

She stared at it, and felt her heart beating faster.

She knelt again and touched her hands to the floor for a third time.

Again, the stone told her of bones and blood and viscera, as they always did. Yet now she focused to find out…

Was any of that blood new?

And she found it was. There was a big splotch of new blood just a few feet from her. It was almost impossible to see with the naked eye, since its stain blended in with the much older, larger stain of ancient fish blood. And her talents hadn’t initially spotted it, as it’d been lost in the larger memory of so much gore.

She took her hands away as her scar began to throb. She felt cold sweat prickling across her back and belly. She turned again to the windows, staring out at the streets. Still nothing.

said Clef.

She felt faint.

Sancia slowly lifted her eyes to stare at the ceiling. She took a deep breath, and slowed her thoughts.

It was obvious what was happening now. The question was what to do next.

What resources do I have? What tools are available?

Not much, she knew. All she had was a stiletto. But she looked around, thinking.

She silently crept along one trip wire, and found its espringal hidden in the corner—yet it was unloaded. Normally it would have had a fléchette pack sitting in its pocket, ready to be hurled forward—but now it was gone. Just a cocked espringal with nothing to shoot.

She grimaced. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. She silently dismantled the trap and slung the espringal across her back.

Clef asked.

she said. She crept along a second trip wire and started disarming it, but she didn’t completely dismantle it.

said Clef, astonished.

She did the same to the third trip wire. Then she set them both up so they ran across the base of the stairs, and positioned the espringals so they were pointed right at the stairway.

she said.